High road to China. Jon Cleary. 1977.

In 1920 Eve Tozer, the attractive daughter of an American tycoon with huge trading interests in China, disembarked from her P & O liner at Tilbury and checked in at the Savoy. Hardly had the page carried the bags to her suite before a mysterious Oriental was announced. Her father, whom she had left safe and sound in Shanghai, had been kidnapped by a warlord. The ransom demanded was a priceless statuette that Eve had brought with her. The closing date for acceptance was only eighteen days off. Even the fastest liner sailing on the next tide could not now reach China in time. The only hope - and that a thin one - was to fly.

How, in those days before airlines and airports, Eve found a couple of of ex-RFC pilots on their upper show they bought and equipped three Bristol three-seaters, how they evaded trouble in France and ran into it in Germany, acquiring on the way the assistance of a one-time member of von Richthoffen’s Circus who had actually fought against Eve’s companions is only part of the plot………